Arthur Meets Mary Sue
by Dead Composer
Summary: A girl from our world falls into Elwood City. This will be different, I promise.
1. Mary Sue Arrives in Elwood City

Once upon a time, in the live-action world (our world), there lived a little girl named Mary Sue. I use the word "lived" loosely, as poor Mary Sue hardly considered what she had to endure daily to be "living". Her real parents had abandoned her when she was six, and had been sent to prison shortly thereafter for their involvement in a drug ring. She had spent a year in a girls' home where her short stature attracted bullies, one of whom left her with a seriously bruised face. After that she was taken in by foster parents, the Fosters; Mr. Foster was a paramedic, and Mrs. Foster was a legal assistant who could not have natural children of her own.  
  
Life with the Fosters proved no better than life in the girls' home, only different. She spent most of her waking hours in a day care center, as her parents were extremely busy with their careers. They had believed that having a child to care for would magically transform them into happy people, and were quite put out when it didn't come to pass. They started to treat the hapless Mary Sue as an unwelcome burden, making her wear ragged old dresses and giving her only prepackaged, unwholesome finger food to eat.  
  
What little interaction the Fosters had with her was limited to complaining about their jobs, complaining about her school performance, complaining about her lack of social skills, complaining, complaining, complaining. They would never let her go out to play with her friends, fearing that the old associates of her birth parents might show up and steal her away. She had only a few secondhand toys to play with, so she spent most of her free time watching public television (the Fosters would allow her to watch nothing else) and reading books from the school library (they only let her check out one at a time, concerned that she might fail to return it).  
  
It was a bleak, joyless existence for the little eight-year-old girl with curly brown hair and a lumpy face. Only one thing brought her a degree of happiness and fulfillment--a PBS cartoon series called Arthur. Her heart brimmed with anticipation every time she watched the opening credits, as the aardvark boy Arthur Read and his faithful pooch Pal strolled along to a reggae beat. She followed every story breathlessly, even if she had seen it ten times before in repeats. She loved the colorful characters, the happy endings, the small victories, the lessons learned. No one ever suffered in Elwood City, an animated universe where everybody understood and loved each other, and even the bullies were more comical than threatening.  
  
Unlike the rough kids at her school, who delighted in taunting her because of the plainness of her clothes and her habit of stuttering when frightened.  
  
One day Mary Sue decided to walk home by a different route, one that led through a field of tall weeds, in hopes of avoiding the ruffians who normally met her on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, her enemies had expected this.  
  
As she shuffled slowly and timidly through the overgrown weeds, two boys and a girl approached her from all sides. They had to be nine or ten years old, and they all had sneers on their faces.  
  
"Hey, l-l-l-look," said the girl, "it's M-M-Mary S-S-Sue."  
  
"L-l-leave me alone!" wailed Mary, covering her face with her hands.  
  
"Don't be afraid," said one of the boys, grabbing Mary Sue's shoulder and turning her to face him. "We just want to give you a makeover."  
  
"Your folks need to buy you some real clothes," said the other boy. "Oh, wait, they can't. They're in jail."  
  
"I have something to cover up those bruises on your face," said the girl, pulling a vial of nail polish from her dress pocket.  
  
Unable to bear any more, Mary Sue ran away from the mocking kids as fast as her feet would carry her, which wasn't very fast. She heard the crunching of weeds beneath the soles of her worn tennis shoes, and the footfalls of the pursuing bullies. They would be upon her any second...  
  
...and then, suddenly, there was nothing under her feet.  
  
A small cul-de-sac and several houses had recently been constructed at the edge of the field, leaving an excavation with an abrupt cliff and no safety fence. Several yards below Mary Sue's feet was a bare stretch of earth covered with rocks and construction waste.  
  
She cried out in fright as she began to fall...  
  
...and landed, a quick moment later, in the middle of a juniper bush.  
  
When she had regained her wits and her breath, Mary Sue pushed the leaves and branches from her face and struggled to rise. Oddly, the bush in which she was ensnared didn't appear real, but seemed to have been drawn and filled in with simple shades of green and red.  
  
Once she had raised her head over the top of the bush, she gasped in shock. This was clearly not her town, or her world, or even her universe. It was a neighborhood with streets and houses, but everything was cartoonish in style, even the sky and the clouds overhead. As if she had been pulled into an illustrated storybook...  
  
Looking down, Mary Sue observed that she was still wearing her ratty old dress, although it was now made up of filled-in lines instead of fabric. On top of that, her hands had changed--the skin was darker in color, and the fingers had become uniform in width, almost like bendable frankfurters. Not only had her world changed, but she had changed as well. Instinctively reaching up and touching her nose, she found that it had become larger, and was rounded and smooth. Moving her hands up higher, she felt her usual curls, but discovered that her ears had moved...and something hard and tube-shaped had attached itself to her temples.  
  
Hearing a squeal of amazement, Mary Sue turned and saw two little boys gaping at her. They looked the same and dressed the same, and she knew immediately who they were...but it wasn't possible...  
  
"I think she's an alien," said one of the boys to the other.  
  
"No, she's a fairy," said the other boy. "We saw her first, so we get wishes."  
  
"She's an alien," insisted the first boy. "You saw her fall out of the sky."  
  
"Fairies can fly too," retorted the second boy. "And you don't believe in her, so I get all the wishes."  
  
"She's an alien!" growled the first boy.  
  
"She's a fairy!" yelled the second.  
  
"Alien!"  
  
"Fairy!"  
  
The two boys wrestled each other to the ground and started to fight. Mary Sue, still confused and scared by her new surroundings, cleared her throat. "Uh, excuse me," she said anxiously. "I n-n-need to l-l-l-look in a m-m-mirror." At least her voice and her stuttering habit remained unchanged.  
  
The twins stopped fighting and looked up at her. "Are you an alien or a fairy?" one of them asked.  
  
"I'm neither," the girl replied. "My name's Mary Sue."  
  
"I'm Tommy," said the boy. Gesturing at his twin, he added, "This is Timmy."  
  
"There's a mirror in the house," said the other boy, pointing at the old, Gothic-looking structure that stood in the lot.  
  
"Th-thank you," said Mary Sue, and started to extricate herself from the juniper bush.  
  
As she walked toward the front door, she marveled at the fact that she was moving around in some sort of cartoon dream world, yet she felt perfectly natural--as if being a storybook character was indistinguishable from being a live person.  
  
The door was open, so she wandered inside. An animated suit of medieval armor stood in one corner of the living room, which was filled with Victorian-style furniture. One side of the room led into the kitchen, where a white-haired old woman was laboring over a stove.  
  
The old woman turned around. "Oh, hello, dear," she said in a kindly voice. "I wasn't expecting visitors." She had an elongated nose and round ears on the top of her head, much like the twins she had met.  
  
Mary Sue stopped. "Uh, hi," she said nervously. "I'm Mary Sue. You must be Mrs. Tibble."  
  
"That's right," replied the old woman, taking a few shuffling steps closer. "I haven't met you before. Did you just move in?"  
  
It was becoming clearer to Mary Sue that Mrs. Tibble and the other denizens of this imaginary Arthur world looked upon her as one of their own. This could only mean that she was no longer human in appearance. Seeing light reflecting off of glass from the corner of her eye, she turned and hurried toward the entrance to what she believed was the bathroom.  
  
And indeed it was, and there was a mirror on the wall. When she beheld her reflection, she gasped louder than she had ever gasped before.  
  
Staring back at her was a cartoon girl with dark skin, curly brown hair, a bulbous nose...and antlers.  
  
"I'm a moose," she said to herself, astonished. "I'm a moose person, just like George."  
  
As she curiously ran her fingers over the long, bony antlers that had fused themselves to her head, she told herself that she would have to be very careful around lockers for as long as she was in this dream.  
  
TBC 


	2. Mary Sue Meets Arthur

After enjoying a few of Mrs. Tibble's homemade peanut butter cookies, Mary Sue the moose girl rushed out of the house, eager to explore this cartoon fantasy world before her dream ended. Glancing up and down the street, she noticed that only a few children were out and about. The sun was standing over the faraway hills, but since she couldn't tell east from west from her vantage point and didn't own a watch, she wasn't sure if it was morning or evening.  
  
Half a block away she recognized a beloved landmark--Arthur Read's house, in all its illustrated glory.  
  
Running with all her strength, she arrived at the front door and searched for the doorbell button. A few seconds after she had rung it, the door swung open and Mrs. Jane Read was standing over her. "Hello, there," said the aardvark woman, smiling.  
  
Mary Sue could hardly contain her enthusiasm. She was about to meet her favorite TV character in the whole universe, up close and personal...  
  
"Is Arthur home?" she asked, wringing her hands impatiently.  
  
"Yes," replied Mrs. Read, "but he can't come out to play right now. He's doing his homework."  
  
"That's all right," Mary Sue responded. "I'll come in."  
  
Mrs. Read stood back and allowed the unfamiliar girl to step inside--but the moment she did, she was confronted by an angry, snarling puppy.  
  
Mary Sue squealed with delight. "Pal! You cute little doggie!" Ignoring the dog's threatening expression, she put out a hand to pet him...  
  
SNAP!  
  
"Ow!" she exclaimed in pain, drawing back her scratched fingers.  
  
"Let me look at that," said Mrs. Read, inspecting the moose girl's hand. "I'm sorry about Pal. He doesn't know you yet. Come to think of it, I don't know you either."  
  
"My name's Mary Sue," the girl replied, alternating her gaze between her wounded fingers and the lazy-looking Baby Kate in her high chair.  
  
"Are you new here?" Mrs. Read asked her while sitting down at the kitchen table and picking up a newspaper.  
  
"No, I'm not," Mary Sue answered. "I mean, yes, I am. What I mean is, I'm from the real world, and I'm having a dream that I'm a character on Arthur." She suddenly remembered what had transpired just before her plunge into the juniper bush, and became concerned. "No, wait. I was running from some bullies, and I fell off a cliff, and now I'm here. Maybe I'm dead, and Elwood City is heaven."  
  
Mrs. Read gazed at her in confusion, trying to piece together what she had just said. "No, you're not dead," she finally replied, "and Elwood City isn't heaven, no matter what the travel brochures say. Arthur's upstairs in his room, if you want to talk to him."  
  
"I know how to find him," said Mary Sue, hurrying toward the stairway without bothering to thank Mrs. Read.  
  
At his desk, Arthur, pencil in hand, was writing a three-page report on the history of naval warfare. Suddenly a drably dressed girl whom he had never met threw open the door and charged into his room.  
  
"Omigosh, omigosh!" she gushed, nearly suffocating from excitement. "Arthur, it's you! It's really you! This is so cool!"  
  
Although it was hard to tell through his glasses, Arthur was narrowing his eyes. "Do I know you?" he asked suspiciously.  
  
"Uh, no, you don't," said Mary Sue, calming down a little. "But I know you. You're Arthur Timothy Read, you're eight years old, you go to Lakewood Elementary, Mr. Ratburn is your teacher, and you have a four-year-old sister named Dora Winifred, but her real name should be Disaster Warning." Incredibly, she had uttered the entire sentence without taking more than one breath.  
  
Arthur smiled slightly and laid down his pencil. "I don't know you either, but I think I like you."  
  
"My name's Mary Sue," the girl went on. "I'm from the real world. I watch your show all the time, but now I'm having a dream, and I'm a character in the show. It's so exciting!"  
  
Arthur started to fidget nervously with his glasses. "What do you mean, the real world?" he said sharply. "This is the real world."  
  
Mary Sue gaped at the aardvark boy. How could he be unaware of the fact that he was the star of an animated TV show? "No, it isn't," she insisted. "It's a cartoon show called Arthur. It's about you and your sister and all your friends."  
  
A look of utter astonishment spread over Arthur's face. "How...how did you know?" he stammered in amazement.  
  
"Know about what?" Mary Sue took a step closer to the desk.  
  
"The dreams," Arthur muttered fearfully, placing his hands on his temples as if in pain. "Every night it's the same dream. Why won't it stop?"  
  
Mary Sue became increasingly worried as she watched Arthur shake his head frantically.  
  
"I come home from school and I open the door," the boy raved, "and instead of my house, it's...it's a sound stage! And there's this weird-looking man...his name is...his name is..."  
  
"Marc Brown?" Mary Sue suggested.  
  
"Argh!" Arthur cried out, putting his arm up as if to shield himself from the girl's evil influence.  
  
"Calm down, Arthur," Mary Sue tried to comfort him. "I've been having the same dream."  
  
Arthur breathed heavily as he recovered from his shock. "Weird," he mused. "Maybe Brain has a scientific explanation."  
  
Mary Sue's moose face lit up. "I want to meet Brain. He's so smart, and cute, too."  
  
"He's probably doing his homework, just like me," said Arthur. "No, I take that back. He's done with homework, and now he's walking along the beach as the tide gently laps at his feet." He sighed wearily.  
  
"Will you introduce me to all your friends?" asked Mary Sue eagerly.  
  
"I can't now," Arthur answered, picking up his pencil again. "I need to finish this report by tomorrow. But it was nice to meet you, Mary Ellen."  
  
"Mary Sue," the moose girl corrected him.  
  
"Whatever." Arthur turned his face toward the half-empty sheet of paper lying on the desk.  
  
Seeing that Arthur wasn't in a socializing mood, Mary Sue closed the bedroom door and wandered down the hallway toward D.W.'s room. Though they weren't the same age, she might have a little fun with the preschool-age girl...and maybe even catch a glimpse of Nadine.  
  
To her surprise, the bathroom door burst open ahead of her and D.W. raced out, completely naked except for a cloud of soap bubbles around her hips. "Mom! Mom!" the little girl shrieked in terror. "There's an octopus in the bathtub!" She stopped cold when she saw Mary Sue, then screamed, "Mom! A strange moose is trying to get me!" D.W. then streaked into the bathroom and slammed the door shut after her.  
  
Mary Sue sighed. There was apparently no enjoyment to be had at the Read house, so she resolved to seek out the other characters.  
  
"The Crosswire mansion is four blocks away," Mrs. Read informed her. "Take a right, go two blocks, take another right, and go two more blocks."  
  
"Thank you, Arthur's mom," said Mary Sue as Pal growled menacingly at her.  
  
While she strolled down the sidewalk in the direction of Muffy's house, Arthur emerged from his room and came down the stairway to use the phone. "Hello, Buster?"  
  
"Yeah, what's up?" came the rabbit boy's voice, which sounded as if he was munching on snacks.  
  
"Do you know a girl named Mary Sue?" Arthur asked him.  
  
"Maybe she's an alien," Buster replied.  
  
"I haven't even said anything about her," Arthur shot back.  
  
"Oh, sorry," said Buster contritely. "No, I don't know a girl named Mary Sue. But I like the name. In fact, I wrote a Bionic Bunny fan fiction last month, and I put in a character named..."  
  
"Thanks, Buster," said Arthur, hanging up the phone.  
  
TBC 


	3. Mary Sue Meets Muffy

When the pine doors of the Crosswire manor opened, Mary Sue was confronted by Bailey, Muffy's manservant. "How may I help you, young lady?" he asked in a meek, British-inflected voice.  
  
The moose girl giggled at the pompous display. "I'd like to see Muffy," she requested.  
  
"I'm sorry," Bailey replied stuffily, "but Miss Muffy cannot be bothered at the moment."  
  
Mary Sue's amused grin started to turn into an impatient glare. "This is my dream," she insisted, "and I'm going to see Muffy. Now take me to her."  
  
"I'm sorry," repeated Bailey, who started to close the door.  
  
Unwilling to be denied, Mary Sue marched past Bailey's legs and into the Crosswire house. The manservant turned, grabbed her by the shoulders, and swiveled her around. "I'm afraid I cannot allow you to enter," he said with a somewhat firmer tone.  
  
The next word to come from his mouth was "Aaaargh!" as Mary Sue kicked him in the knee with all her strength.  
  
Having incapacitated the sentry, she rushed eagerly up the spiral staircase which she knew led to Muffy's room. The door was ajar, so she stepped inside and found Muffy and Prunella seated on upholstered stools together. Prunella was in the act of slowly running her fingers over Muffy's palm and examining it closely with her eyes. "The money line is very strong today," Prunella intoned mystically. "It's a good day to embark on another money-making scheme."  
  
"Omigosh, it's Muffy!" Mary Sue blurted out.  
  
Muffy and Prunella gaped at the unexpected stranger who had appeared in the room. "Wh-who..." Muffy stammered.  
  
"I can't believe I'm really in your bedroom," gushed Mary Sue, glancing around at the lavish furniture and beautiful carpet. "Oh, hi, Prunella," she added as an afterthought. Bounding over to the closet, she grabbed a red dress from the endless array of outfits and held it over her own ragged clothes. "This dress is gorgeous," she said wistfully. "I must try it on."  
  
"You most certainly will not," said the indignant Muffy as she and Prunella leaped to their feet. "Who the heck are you? What makes you think you can march into my room unannounced?"  
  
"This is coming from someone who trapped Nick Carter in an elevator," Mary Sue replied petulantly. As she started to pull the dress from its hanger, Muffy ripped it out of her hands. A moment later Bailey limped into the room, pausing occasionally to clutch his pain-wracked knee.  
  
"Bailey, show this intruder to the door," ordered Muffy as she replaced the red dress on the closet rack.  
  
"Come along now, miss," Bailey coaxed Mary Sue gently. The girl tried to kick his good knee, but he swung down his arm and knocked her leg aside. She made another attempt, but he blocked her again. The next thing she knew, she was being carried aloft in the manservant's strong hands. "I may be a gentleman's gentleman," he told her, "but I can defend myself when the need arises."  
  
However, Mary Sue still had an ace up her sleeve. Turning her neck swiftly, she swatted Bailey in the face with one of her antlers. "Ooowww!" the man cried, dropping her and putting a hand over his wounded cheek.  
  
Pushing herself up, Mary Sue gazed earnestly at the frightened Muffy. "You wouldn't treat me like this if you knew what I know. You're a TV star. You're a character in the most popular kid's show on TV. Millions of girls look up to you and want to be like you, and that includes me."  
  
The now-furious Bailey crouched and prepared to pounce on Mary Sue, but Muffy waved a hand to stop him. "Bailey, out," she commanded. The confused manservant complied, closing the door after he had departed from the room.  
  
Muffy's voice took on a hushed, reverential tone as she approached Mary Sue. "You...you're from the future..." she whispered.  
  
The astounded moose girl didn't respond.  
  
"You're from the future," Muffy said aloud. "You've come back to tell me what's in store for me."  
  
"And what am I, chopped liver?" Prunella groused.  
  
"No, Muffy," said Mary Sue, shaking her head. "I'm from the real world, where you, and Arthur, and all your friends, are characters on a TV show. Now I'm having a dream that I'm a character on the show too. That's why I look like a moose."  
  
"I don't get it," said the flabbergasted Muffy.  
  
"In my world, everybody's a human being," Mary Sue explained. "In the Arthur world, everybody's a talking animal. I'm a moose. You're a monkey." She gestured at Prunella. "And you're a rat."  
  
Prunella gasped in outrage.  
  
"Bailey!" screamed Muffy.  
  
There followed a spectacular fight scene that ended with Bailey carrying Mary Sue by the antlers and hurling her through the pine doors onto the pavement, where she landed in a disheveled heap. "And don't come back!" the manservant yelled at her as he closed the doors.  
  
Still fuming, Mary Sue rolled over, sat up, and straightened her skirt. "They can't do this to me," she grumbled. "This is my dream. I'm the only person in this world who's real."  
  
She heard a growling, gurgling sound as she stood up; it came from her stomach.  
  
"I'm hungry," she thought. "I guess I still have to eat, even though I'm a cartoon character."  
  
She started to walk aimlessly away from the Crosswire mansion, pondering where she might find something edible in Arthurland. "Buster," the thought occurred to her. "He's always eating. Maybe he'll share with me."  
  
Problem. Buster and his mother lived in a condominium, and Mary Sue didn't know the address or the unit number. She would have to get directions, but from who? Going back to Arthur's house seemed like as good an idea as any.  
  
She strolled along, her stomach still rumbling, the sun dipping behind the hills. At least there wasn't a baby in the sun, like on that other stupid kid's show. The air was cooling down, but not too badly. Animated dandelions were blooming in the lawns, suggesting that it was sometime around late March.  
  
Then, several houses ahead of her, she beheld something that made her jaw drop.  
  
George the moose boy stood in front of a chain-link fence, quivering, as the fearsome tough kids Molly and Rattles towered over him and shook their fists menacingly.  
  
Fear seized hold of Mary Sue's heart. It was injustice, and she hated injustice, but she hated getting beaten up even more. And as she had just learned, bigger people could still push her around in this cartoon dream world.  
  
Yet poor George suffered so much on the show--shyness, dyslexia, an inferior singing voice, the taunts of bullies. It wasn't fair. She had to help...  
  
TBC 


	4. Mary Sue Meets George

"What's the matter, George?" said Molly with insincere sweetness as the moose boy cowered speechlessly before her. "Can't you talk without Wally?"  
  
"Of course he can't," Rattles joked. "He's the dummy. Wally controls him."  
  
It was at this moment that the bold Mary Sue walked up to George's side, raised her arm into the air, pointed at Rattles and Molly, and shouted, "Leave...him...alone!"  
  
At first Molly and Rattles were surprised, but then they grinned even more maliciously. "I'm, like, seeing double, man," Rattles marveled. "Instead of one little moose girl, I see two." Molly glowered at him, and his expression became sheepish. "I, uh, didn't mean to imply anything by that statement."  
  
Mary Sue placed her hands over George's trembling shoulders. "Don't be afraid of them," she reassured him. "They may be bigger, but we've got antlers."  
  
"Like antlers are gonna do you any good," said Molly, clenching her fists. "All they're good for is getting your head stuck in your locker."  
  
"Yeah," Rattles added. "You should just file 'em down. Get rid of 'em."  
  
Molly reached into her pocket and pulled out a metallic object. "Hey, I've got a nail file right here."  
  
"What are we waiting for?" said Rattles, and then he and Molly, brandishing the file, advanced threateningly toward the two moose children.  
  
George remained rooted to the spot with terror...but not so Mary Sue. Screaming like a banshee, she flung herself at Molly, plowing into the larger girl's belly with her antlers. As Rattles watched disbelievingly, Molly landed on her back in the gutter and lay still, moaning and clutching her stomach.  
  
Mary Sue stood proudly over her, grinning triumphantly. She then turned to see how George was faring...when a pair of strong hands latched themselves onto her antlers. "I've got you now!" gloated Rattles, and Mary Sue's futile attempts to twist her head free from his grasp convinced her that the boy's boast might be true.  
  
Fury welled up in George's heart when he saw his new defender in peril. Lowering his head, he charged with all his strength and smacked Rattles directly in the posterior. Mary Sue stepped aside as the bully flew forward and relaxed his grip on her antlers. A moment later there were two toughs lying in the gutter, groaning in pain.  
  
"Oh, my stomach," Molly whined.  
  
"Oh, my butt," Rattles complained. "Now I'll have to think with my head."  
  
George and Mary Sue looked each other over, making sure neither was hurt. Then George took the strange girl by the hand. "Thank you," he said with emotion. "Thank you for helping me."  
  
The touch of George's fingers caused Mary Sue to experience a strange and wonderful feeling. The moose boy had always been one of her favorite characters, in spite of the fact that he didn't appear much. It had something to do with his long-suffering nature, his purity of heart, his weird charm. And now she was holding hands with him, and he was thanking her for saving his life. And she was in the body of a moose girl, hardly distinguishable from him except for the curly hair and the dress. And even though she knew it was a dream, it seemed utterly real, at least as real as she imagined a cartoon existence could be. Was she in love? Was it possible for eight-year-old animations to fall in love?  
  
"What's your name?" asked the suddenly handsome-looking George.  
  
"M-M-M-M-M-" Mary Sue sputtered bashfully.  
  
George smiled and let go of her hand.  
  
"M-Mary S-Sue," she managed to blurt out. "And you're G-G-George."  
  
"Yeah," said the moose boy. "How do you know me?"  
  
Mary Sue stared blankly at him as Molly and Rattles crept out of the gutter and shuffled painfully down the sidewalk, cursing silently all the way.  
  
"Where's your mom and dad?" George queried.  
  
It occurred to Mary Sue that she hadn't given a single thought to her foster parents since landing in the Tibbles' juniper bush. They might be worried about her, uncharacteristic as it seemed. She wasn't sure how much time had passed in the real world since the beginning of her dream. Perhaps she had fallen and struck her head, and the Fosters had called an ambulance to carry her unconscious, possibly comatose, body to the hospital. If that were the case, she might never wake up...  
  
"My...mom and dad?" Mary Sue wanted to tell George the truth about the world she came from, but feared he would mock her as the other characters had.  
  
"We're right here," came a woman's voice from behind her. She recognized it as Mrs. Foster's. Had the dream ended?  
  
She dreaded to turn around. George was still standing in front of her, looking up as if he had seen someone tall approach. Somehow Mary Sue was straddling the two worlds, the cartoon world and her beloved George ahead of her, and the real, uncaring world behind her back. If she turned, the dream world would certainly dissolve, possibly forever. Yet for all she knew, the Fosters were trying to call her back from unconsciousness, and maybe death...  
  
She had no alternative. Leaning forward, she gently pecked George on the cheek. "Goodbye," she said plaintively. "I hope I'll see you again."  
  
"Uh...bye," said George, grinning, waving, and blushing a little. He apparently had no conception of what the lonely girl was giving up.  
  
Mary Sue turned around.  
  
To her shock, it was not her foster parents that she saw, but two stern-looking moose people, a man and woman. Amazingly, they were dressed and groomed in a similar manner to the Fosters.  
  
"Shame on you, Mary Sue," scolded the moose woman in a voice identical to Mrs. Foster's. "Hitting other kids with your antlers. Just for that, you'll go to bed without dinner."  
  
Mary Sue glanced down at her hands. They were still cartoonish. Reaching up, she felt antlers sprouting from her head. She wasn't in the real world.  
  
Then it hit her.  
  
"Y-you're my parents," she said to the moose couple in astonishment. "M-my c-cartoon parents."  
  
"Uh-huh," the moose man grumbled impatiently. "Now, are you coming with us or not? I'll give you a hint. You're coming with us." As Mary Sue feared and expected, his voice exactly resembled Mr. Foster's.  
  
She looked down at her feet and the green grass, and thought about how foolish she had been to not see this coming. She hadn't simply fallen from the sky. The moose girl whose identity she had assumed had a home and family of her own. She had to go along.  
  
Mary Sue gazed up at her moose parents with pleading eyes. "Will I ever see George again?" she asked earnestly.  
  
"Maybe," said the moose woman coldly. "If we ever come back to this part of town. Now let's get moving."  
  
Fearing to disobey, Mary Sue started to walk toward the moose couple. Turning her head once last time, she called, "Goodbye, George. I'll call you."  
  
"My last name is Nordgren," George yelled out as Mary Sue and her parents started to shrink out of sight. "My dad's name is Carl. My mom's name is Lena. We're in the White Pages."  
  
Moments later, Mary Sue was strapped into the back seat of an animated Buick. In front of her, the moose father waved his head back and forth, his large antlers scratching the car's ceiling, as he pulled away from the curb and turned on the headlights.  
  
The moose mother looked back at Mary Sue with a scowl. "You shouldn't have run off like that," she admonished the girl. "There could be bullies in the neighborhood. You don't know."  
  
As the Buick rolled along the highway to another part of Elwood City, Mary Sue wondered about her fate. Maybe, she thought, this cartoon moose existence was her new life, and she would remain a part of it. Maybe her memories of being a human girl in the real world were an illusion. She was only certain of one thing--she wanted to hold hands with George again.  
  
The car disappeared into the twilight, and the words THE END appeared on the TV screen.  
  
"Whoa, that was sweet," said Jimmy, one of two human siblings who had just watched the latest episode of The Mary Sue Show.  
  
"Yeah," responded his sister Becca, who was two years younger. "Mary Sue's got a boyfriend."  
  
THE END 


End file.
